Saturday, October 26, 2013

Restaurant Review: Sushi O Sushi

Another Japanese restaurant with "sushi" in its name where I go to and don't eat the sushi. At least this time, I didn't get teriyaki but went for the katsu instead. This is one of many Asian restaurants in Silicon Valley located in a strip mall that's a good place to go for a quick lunch. I've eaten here twice and the food has been decent although I don't know that I would rave about it or consider it a must-go place. It was convenient and easy to get to and my coworker and I felt like going there for lunch so we did.

We got there a little before twelve so we were able to get seated right away. I don't think the place really got packed but it seemed to be doing pretty good business while we were there. Our server was very nice and took our orders quickly. The food came out in a relatively short amount of time which is always good when you're in a time crunch to get back to the office before afternoon meetings.

Miso soup and salad

I ordered the lunch combo - two items were $10.50, including miso soup, salad and rice. It's not super cheap but for Japanese food, that's one of the cheapest lunches you'll find in the area. They also had a wide selection of sushi but you know I didn't really glance at that menu. For my combo, I selected the chicken katsu and the tempura. If you get chicken katsu in a bowl, it comes atop a bed of rice with vegetables, onions and egg. The katsu in the lunch special came out as plain breaded chicken with a dipping sauce. Unfortunately not super flavorful or tasty so I think I should've gotten the normal katsu order in a bowl. The tempura was good but a little skimpy: 1 shrimp, 1 slice of sweet potato, and 1 other fried, breaded vegetable hitherto unidentified because I didn't eat it.

Combo lunch: chicken katsu and tempura

Okay, now that I think about it, I guess the relatively low price point (for a Japanese restaurant) was commensurate with the amount of food it came with. I probably would've enjoyed it more had I ordered something different. The first time I went to Sushi O Sushi, I also had the lunch combo but picked the chicken teriyaki and the gyoza (pot stickers) which I think were better than what I ordered this time.

Close up of the Chicken Katsu

The lone shrimp tempura

One common item on both visits though was the steamed rice. The rice was fine but I'm used to Japanese restaurants having really good rice. This was just standard, like something I could make myself in my little rice cooker. Whereas the really good rice is a little more moist than this and you can't stop eating it. I didn't even finish my little bowl. It's not Gochi rice.

Oh well, as always, it's really more about the company than the food. In that light, my coworker and I had a great conversation so it was a good lunch.